Articles and Responses

In 350 B.C., Aristotle said a good speech had ethos, pathos, and logos

in 2008-2009, a study done on the NYTimes most emailed story concluded:

Berger and Milkman found that two features predictably determined an article’s success: how positive its message was and how much it excited its reader. Articles that evoked some emotion did better than those that evoked none—an article with the headline “baby polar bear’s feeder dies” did better than “teams prepare for the courtship of lebron james.” But happy emotions (“wide-eyed new arrivals falling in love with the city”) outperformed sad ones (“web rumors tied to korean actress’s suicide”).

The Six Things You Need to Know to Make Your Voice Heard. While emotion and arousal still top the list, a few additional factors seem to make a big difference. First, he told me, you need to create social currency—something that makes people feel that they’re not only smart but in the know. “Memes like LOLcats, I think, are a perfect example of social currency, an insider culture or handshake,” Berger told me. “Your ability to pass it on and riff on it shows that you understand. It’s the ultimate, subtle insider signal: I know without yelling that I know.

“People love stories. The more you see your story as part of a broader narrative, the better,”

Takeaways:

add some humor

Make the ending uplifting

change title (your salvation is near, not ‘upload my brain’)

create some phrases that people can takeaway with, like ‘neural network neighborhood’

have the user finish off a listicle (haha, but seriously)

make the user part of the broader story, with the onboarding or the ending